


There Are Listed Buildings

by sakuraba



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Multiple Universes, Platonic Relationships, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-05 09:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5369483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuraba/pseuds/sakuraba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the city smiles and says, "We know."</p><p>[a collection of unrelated drabbles ft. the twewy kids. joshua/neku and shiki/eri + various platonic group-bonding sessions are prominent. multiple genres/universes.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JoshNeku // Prompt: "Neku cuddling with Composer-form Joshua" for my favorite [Ven](http://kirikoma.tumblr.com/). Sugar-coma fluff!

joshua is – not himself right now.

actually, joshua is more himself than ever. himselves. themselves. neku's still stuck on the grammar of it, fingers caught on commas and (currently) the collarbone closest to him. the Composer's body is a universe unto itself, a city carved into a church, and most importantly it belongs to joshua, so neku will tuck it close to his heart and paint his sketchbooks with it on rainy days.

joshua keeps the city in him. sometimes neku still finds the sick: the lonely in the hollow of the throat, the anger above the right hip. joshua keeps the city in him and neku holds the city close enough to burn, a hand rubbing circles into joshua's shoulder blade (udagawa) and his mouth following joshua's jawline (spain hill) until the dark blurs out and the city can breathe again. a baptism in reverse.

joshua catches the thought in a butterfly net and laughs, a legion and a river spinning neku's soul out in neon, painting it out across 104. his mouth trails down the column of joshua's throat, a saint on predatory pilgrimage, wanders past cat street in the trough of the left collarbone and–-

stops

just over joshua's heart, feels the heartbeat of the city and the boy and the world centered on a tiny apartment across the district. “i live here,” neku says dumbly. somewhere in the city, the dark blurs out. "i live here."

and the city smiles and says, “we know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://traversetown.tumblr.com/) (requests open!)


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JoshNeku; Modern Prophet Neku + Guardian Angel Joshua. Second-person from Joshua's perspective. Angst.

He isn't cut out for this.

He wakes up with blood in his mouth and starts speaking in hands, knuckles bruised as they flex around the first piece of charcoal they find. Prophecy in his sketchbook. (Another still-life ruined by divine right.) He speaks aloud as he writes, languages he doesn't know crawling off his tongue like tar and leaking onto the floor, black enough to make the bathroom tile look clean (he slept in the tub again). 

He isn't cut out for this. Kids like him are shunned even by the burdened, tell-tale omens wrapped around their skin like nooses, hand-ravaged hair and bloodshot eyes and hands that smell like paint. Prophecy on his walls. He's run out of paper and he'll run out of money when the landlord sees, and it's a shame, you two have only just moved in and now you'll have to leave again. You don't have the heart to tell him it's mostly gibberish. He'll give up hope and take his vow of silence sooner or later, and then he'll no longer be exclusively yours -- another decade-long waste of a guardian angel, the finest porcelain locked away only to be found again. Another life ruined by divine right.

Prophecy on his skin, your mouth on his mouth. Your hands shake. You aren't cut out for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if it wasn't obvious this was originally in the no-caps no-paragraph-breaks style colloquially known as "a mess."
> 
> [tumblr](http://traversetown.tumblr.com/) (requests open!)


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiki/Eri + Platonic Neku-Shiki and Neku-Eri // Prompt: "Shiki and Eri helping Neku dye his hair" for [Caden!](http://phantoms.co.vu//) Fluff.

“He's too _pale_ ,” Shiki says like her house is burning down.

Neku _is_ too pale, but his apartment is not burning down, thank you very much. Fortunately for everyone involved, he's too busy playing Animal Crossing to take much offense. His mouth is purple from the Fruit Gushers he's been eating (though he ran out somewhere between opening the developer and Eri turning the radio on) and they have the windows open to air the kitchen out.

Not that the city smells much better than bleach, but hey. You take what you can get.

"Yeah, probably,” Eri admits, then redirects her attention to her hands. “Hey, Neku, head up.”

Neku complies and moves his 3DS accordingly, shakes a tree and picks up the apples that fall from it. The radio starts playing his favorite song from last summer. Somewhere outside a generator hums happily, and Neku imagines Joshua is having a good day.

“Okay, so he's too pale for pink,” Eri says. She keeps applying the bleach in swathes; it's cold and gooey on his scalp. “What about green?”

Green? No way. “No green,” Neku interjects. It's his second rule of the afternoon, right after _no making out behind me while you're playing chemist with my scalp._ He's feeling gutsy.

Shiki sighs, long-suffering, like the exhalation might put out the fire that isn't burning down his apartment, or convince him to dye his hair hideous colors, or drown out the happy hum of the generator. “Fine, fine – but you promised you'd let us dye it a fun color after the bleach sets! Would it kill you to help us out a little?”

“Right.” He blinks down at his 3DS and, in a stroke of genius that could only be inspired by an Animal Crossing villager (named _Hachiko_ , this time), says, “How about blue?”

“Ooh!” Eri says, right as Shiki laughs a comment about his hair clashing with his headphones. But his apartment isn't on fire, and the city is filtering in through his kitchen windows, and he reminds her he doesn't need them anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An exercise in style, going for something simpler than my usual -- not overwhelmingly successful, but still fun!
> 
> [tumblr](http://traversetown.tumblr.com/) (requests open!)


	4. iv.

“He says he's God.”

Shiki's voice hits the floor in record timing. “A god.”

“No, not _a_ god,” Neku says, passively, like he's explaining a math problem. “God. Big G.” It makes sense, if he's honest with himself; by the end of his third logarithmic derivative, he can't think of a reason why such a pretty boy wouldn't be God.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super super short platonic Shiki-Nekus ft. some Mystery Pairing (yeah, right).
> 
> [tumblr](http://traversetown.tumblr.com/) (requests open!)


	5. v.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JoshNeku; Post-Canon. Spawned from birthday talk on Twitter.

“When's your birthday?” Neku says. He doesn't know, exactly, if that's an Okay thing to ask, but he's spent two years gradually working his way into Joshua's non-existent inner-circle and –- well. He's gotta stop walking on eggshells at some point, right? Even about weird immortal stuff.

Joshua hums, spends a few more minutes throwing bread to the ducks before answering, “January twenty-fourth.”

And that... hmm. He's sure he hasn't asked before, but something about that particular date sticks in his teeth for a minute, the sort of discordant note that he could spend days trying to put his finger on. It's less something important and more the memory of something important; an old and omnipresent ache, something unfolded from old scrapbooks and childhood journal entries. An ex-best friend's big birthday party, maybe, or a particularly grueling trip to the dentist, the deathdate of a distant relative or maybe-–

“You started the long game on your birthday?” he asks, surprised, and Joshua's teeth grind together, hard.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://traversetown.tumblr.com/) (requests open!)
> 
> Unrelated but headcanon dictates that Joshua and Neku are both Aquariuses, which is largely the reason Neku refuses to put stock in astrology.


	6. vi.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua/Neku; vaguely 1950s-inspired normal AU. Warning for implied homophobia, I don't know, this is a mess actually.

Joshua, best worst-kept secret: the not-quite-faded glitter-gloss nocked in a cupid's bow on monday mornings, the faint coral-blue at the corner of one eye. Lipstick stains on the bottle, a candy-apple mouth and a pull of hard whiskey. A name dropped mockingly, wadded whispers to litter the hallways, a name scrawled in pale purple on the back of the bleachers. A name pulled from Neku's mouth past midnight, in the branches of the biggest oak tree in the park, extracted like a memory or a lung (Neku's too busy hoping the branches will keep them hidden to notice).

Joshua, the boy not the name, sprawled on Neku's bedroom floor with his arms crossed over his chest, Neku's favorite record clutched there like it'll give him a heartbeat. Lipstick stains on Neku's collarbone. Joshua fits nicely in Neku's lap but less so in his life, something to be pinned down in a photo-album and mislabeled and left on the shelves, and he hopes it's raining the day that Neku's kids inevitably find some picture of them together with _best friends_ scrawled beneath it. Joshua, crying in the passenger seat while Neku pretends, kindly, not to notice. a varsity jacket draped over his naked shoulders. A pink streamer, a _happy birthday,_ an impermanence bottled up and made last; life with no escape. Lipstick stains on Neku's cigarette. Lipstick stains on the gun. Joshua, best worst-kept secret.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the lag in updates! my best friend flew in from across the country so i've been a little preoccupied. merry christmas to everyone celebrating!


	7. vii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JoshNeku // Prompt: Joshua and Neku playing vidya. Fluff.

On a neat, color-coded list of all the things Neku Sakuraba has struggled to do through a sheen of tears -- sandwiched between Shoot Your Best Friend and Wait Out A Stubbed Toe -- the phrase Beat The Tutorial Level of Super Mario stands out in bright, confounding, _gleeful_ green.

“I just – knew you were bad, but–” He neglects a koopa shell to wipe a tear. “Holy shit, I didn't even think it was _possible_ to be so miserable at _Mario_ of all things.” His shoulders are shaking. His ribs hurt. His young body hasn't seen this much damage since Joshua decided to raid Lapin Angelique's lingerie section.

“I can't imagine why.” An arch sip of his lukewarm smoothie, sucking strawberry clumps through his straw as though he's just lost a world war and is feeling a little cross about it. “I've never equivocated on the fact that–”

Neku jumps a goomba to get to a fire flower and elbows Joshua in the ribs. “Stop using words like _equivocate_ in casual conversation, douchebag. Not everyone knows what they mean.”

“But _you_ do,” Joshua says, like Neku _is_ everyone, and, well. Gee.

“Yeah, well.” The controller hits Joshua's lap with a satisfying clatter. “Try getting more than ten seconds in and we'll see what else I can do for you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my girlfriend came and visited me for a week, she left today but it was really nice
> 
> i'm writing something longer (joshneku, shocker) that i hope at least 2.5 people will read (i'm the .5 people), and also catch me at traversetown.tumblr.com, and also i'm very tired


	8. viii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JoshNeku; So my friend Ven really wants Joshua to get punched in the face; Angst

Two knuckles, and he can hear his nose break before he can feel it. It's satisfying in that knife-flash sort of way, the soaring arc of an ax before it comes down on the queen's head – the whir, the whistle, the sickening crack. He sees his blood on Neku's hand, the red paint on a white rose, and thinks about the trickle making half-moons of his own face. But not for long; instead he thinks about Neku's shaking hand, the hand reserved, in Joshua's memory, for being wrapped around spraycans, wrapped around coffee cups, wrapped around Joshua's own.

Neku gasps, and it's like pouring a pitcher of water onto a bonfire, thick and lush and never-ending. A waterfall of a sound. “I'm sorry.” He sounds like he's apologizing for his own murder, which he is. Gentle handprints on Joshua's chest, worse than the punch, worse than the gunshot that never came. The realization of his own capacity to hurt unravels on Neku's face, bubbles and pops and fissions off bullets. Beautiful boy.

Joshua wonders when he will stop wanting to drink up Neku's sick long enough to start healing it, and laughs.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my best pal amelia updated [ her joshneku fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4819340/chapters/11034605) today and i wanted to plug it because her capacity for word-spinning consistently takes my breath away, it's a blessing!! and i love it and i love her and you will too
> 
> also [this](http://traversetown.tumblr.com) is my tumblr, i put my shoes and failed creative endeavors here


	9. ix.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Random JoshNeku angst, big fun

That's the problem with boys like Joshua, boys who live in the gardens inside their heads and have belladonna snares for mouths. Neku knows the literature. Boys like that steal the soul out from under you, wring you dry of every kiss and confession and lovely thought to water their flowers with, and then they cast you aside – something for the slugs to get, something that Doesn't Understand. A name on a list. Neku doesn't do well with being a name on a list, better a nothing than a phantom, better a passing face than an _almost-could-be_ name-dropped from lipstick to champagne glass over dinner with the one who finally got it right. It's not right, what boys like him do. It's pretentious and shallow and ugly, bile-yellow. It's not how people should _work_.

Neku wants him so badly his knees shake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is actually a quasi-excerpt from that Longer JoshNeku Fic i mentioned however many chapters back -- which is the reason for the slower updates, by the way, sorry about that! hopefully that'll be up soon. i try not to be a drag but comments are really appreciated; regardless, i hope you enjoyed!


	10. x.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Platonic Joshua and Hanekoma; Prompt: Hanekoma comforting Joshua through the grueling becoming-Composer-process. Canon 'verse. Also titled: Hanekoma Sanae Makes An Error of Judgment.

Joshua is a torn and faded streamer strewn across the floor, a broken amber bottleneck glittering in chunks where window-slats let the light in. A shivering, barely-contained thing, face-down on Wildkat's tiling; pathetic, yes, but broken and more dangerous for it. It makes sense, if Sanae thinks about it. (He tries not to.) A grenade's no threat to anyone until you break it apart.

“Hey, J,” he says. Nudges him with the toe of his foot, more out of caution than fear – nothing this broken can hurt anyone, but he doesn't wanna spook the kid. Joshua looks up at him blearily and somewhere a thousand blue-and-green cat's eye marbles are rolling over a countertop and onto a white tile floor. There are a thousand corresponding janglings in Sanae's bones, mallet-meets-funny-bone.

“Who are you?” Joshua asks, in a voice that isn't his own, and vomits up a rainpuddle of static.

It's not supposed to be this hard.

“It's alright, Josh.” He slinks to the floor, scoops the godglassboy up into an embrace and rubs novels into his back. He's shaking more violently than the human body is structurally capable of. He could flatten a skyscraper with an errant thought. “It'll be alright.”

Joshua sobs, smaller now than when he met him as a child, and... shit, it's dangerous for a hundred different reasons, but he shoots him up with a little something from the higher-ups. He'll get in trouble for it later, but the crying subsides a little and Joshua's body goes limp; somewhere in the city, it stops raining.

Nothing this broken can hurt anyone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise update hello!! everyone my twitter timeline had a sudden writing jamboree and i decided to join in with this hastily-strung-together wordpuddle. my friends and i are historically interested in the transition from human to composer (enough that i [made a mix about it](http://8tracks.com/ectofeature/of-the-word-god), not to self-plug like an asshole) so! y'know. here's That.


End file.
